Location-Based Push Services in Wireless LAN Hotspots

Abstract

Due to the small cell sizes in Wireless LANs (WLANs), it is practical to develop location dependent services based upon the awareness of the WEAN access points (AP) that mobile clients currently access. One possible E-commerce application in public WLAN hotspots is the delivery of location dependent information to mobile users. In this paper, we will discuss how to provide location-based push services in WLAN hotspots. It will be shown that the location of a mobile client can be determined effectively from the SNMP traps sent by APs. APs identify each mobile client by its MAC address. To deliver information to the mobile client, we also have to know the current IP address of the mobile client. We propose an effective technique for mapping MAC addresses into IP addresses. Two web service frameworks are then proposed to enable location-based push services in WLAN hotspots.